Work of flame

Hiding The Light Under a Bushel.

Six months ago, I was at Nino Salvagio, which is a local grocery store. Kind of a highish end fruit and international market, you know the sort of place. It’s not really important, but you need to understand that it’s not a corporate place, it’s local. Now I was getting a few things and I saw... her.

She was beautiful, even though there were several things she had going on that aren’t to my tastes. Dreadlocks always look weird to me on blonde girls. Almost... contrived? She had gauges in her ears, which is fine, but not something I’ve ever been fond of. There were scars on her arm, a remnant no doubt of an earlier cutting habit. A few bad tattoos and some misbegotten make-up, and a sullen slouch completed the look. And through all that, she was beautiful. Jaw dropping, heart aching, mind ceasing, utter beauty. The sort of beauty you’d talk about until she became some kind of legend, and when people saw her they’d say “Okay, so one time reality has it over legend.”

Through what seemed to be a considerable amount of effort, she had tried her best to negate what the dvergar that assembled people that day gave her, and all that came to was that she was stunning. Not in a Venus in Blue Jeans kind of way, but in a “Why did you bother fighting it?” kind of way. There was nothing short of going at her face with a straight razor and a hammer that would do anything to hide the perfection of her features. And I’m guessing she hated every moment of it.

I didn’t talk to her about it, of course I didn’t. People say that sometimes “So I talked to her.” But no, they usually didn’t. If they did, they didn’t get an honest answer anyway. She wasn’t going to talk to someone nearly twice her age about her life choices. Had I asked, I would have gotten a few non-committal answers and she would have run to her phone and tweeted “OMG some gross old man just tried to hit on me, or shame me about my tats I don’t know #fuckoffoldman” Because that’s how these interactions really go, I know. I have had to give nosey fuckers non-answers when they try to ask me questions that they have no right to.

I understand, I was an attractive child. From infancy I had the sort of face that made people think I was up to something. At the age of two I had perfected the little lop sided grin that says “I’m going to get away with it, and you’re going to let me get away with it because look at this face.” I grew from an adorable infant to a beautiful child. Some teenage girls clustered around me one day, talking about how beautiful I was, how dark and black my eyes were and so on. I would have been in with a chance if I hadn’t been four at the time. That was what life was like. I was a good looking child.

No one much wanted to listen to me, (besides a few people) I guess, they’d have rathered I was quiet and attractive and did what I was told. I had different ideas, more self-directed. I was adored by many, but also deeply frustrating because I wouldn’t do the “good things” people had planned for me. There comes a problem though, even though I was adored, I could never really trust anyone. No one wanted to listen, they wanted control or at best to be liked by me and my prettiness. I am, several people said, easy to like in a strange way.

I’m good as many things. I can paint, and sing, and draw, and cook, and listen, and write, and make love, and identify songs and why a place might be playing them on Fourth of July Weekend. I do some of these well, and some of them less well. The problem is, there are some people who never let me know I wasn’t doing something well. I was smart enough to identify bullshit when I heard it as a child. For example, I am shit at making clay sculptures. I have one that I keep, to remind me of how shitty I am at it. It’s a good thing I do too, because otherwise people would still be telling me how great I am at making clay sculptures.

Now sure, if I practiced, and worked at it, I could become good at clay. I’m not interested though, I don’t like it enough and I don’t care. Sign of genius that, quitting something because I wasn’t instantly good at it. I was interested to learn that last year, before I thought I was just kind of lazy because I didn’t want to work at things I wasn’t good at. Writing is something I can be good at, even though I tend to entertain myself through my writing too much. I sacrifice flow and readability for the sake of something I find fun. As you well know, I can often go on irritating tangents and fill paragraphs with things that only connect for me and links. However, sometimes I let it burn because I like it burned, so there. Most of this paragraph was filler, but I like the filler. It’s good filler, and I won’t hear a word against it.

I’m pretty sure I was making some kind of point here. Allow us to wallow past the point and into this little pool of thought that’s sort of bubbled over from the main stream. Lay on your back and just float for a moment...

I try to be honest, and posts like this one are an attempt at the sort of honesty I’m talking about. I try to give you an idea of what being inside my head is like. And yeah, this is what it’s like. The sudden gear changes, the references to old books, movies and music, because melody haunts my reverie. Some things are so obscure, and the connections change so quickly, I won’t remember why I thought A was connected to B when I read this later. Syd likes the honesty, it baffles a lot of other people. Some people are always looking for a duplicity that doesn’t exist, and that sort of depresses me because I’m always doing my best to be honest. I’m not good at dishonesty, unless I dedicate myself to it, and then I can’t even stand to be around the asshole that it forces me to become. So I go for the honest thing, because it’s easier and nobler and I can. I know other people lie though, because they do.

Back to the story (about this girl named Blah Blah Blah that adored me)

It always leaves me wondering, how much of any compliment is real. It becomes more complicated when people compliment me for things that are automatic for me. I do some things without thinking and other people are all “Holy shit! You did that thing!” and I’m standing there saying “Yeah... I have pretensions to being a person and in order to maintain the facade I have to do shit like this.” It deeply complicates the matter when 80% of the things people have said to me have been either A) Bullshit or B) Stupid.

Did I mention this above? Screw it, I’ve gone this far and I’m not re-reading this thing again. People will offer empty compliments to attractive people. I often have trouble knowing if I told a funny joke, or if the person I’m talking to just thinks I’m cute. Is my painting any good, or were certain people blinded by desire and as such said they liked the horrible splotches of mangled color? I don’t know if I like the paintings that much myself and around the 30th re-write, or the 90th re-read, everything looks like shitty half formed ideas put together by someone as smelly as a monkey with a typewriter, but not as bright. You can’t trust anything anyone says after a while, and when you’re also smart enough to understand what’s going on you quickly start to feel like you’re on an island about two feet by two feet... and the water is rising. At some point we’ll talk about depression, but not today.

I can understand that girl’s problem and her attempt as a solution though. I would assume she has some intelligence and doesn’t want to just be pretty. She had no choice, but she wants more. She’d like to be thought of as a person, an individual, maybe even someone with a thought and an idea. It’s harder for girls, because society still wants women to be ornamental baby makers. Guys can have thoughts, but no one ever really listens or understands. They just try to keep up as best they can and act impressed when he says a big word. If I could do what that girl did, I just might.

There isn’t much I can do, if I leave off showering I just get smelly. I don’t like being really smelly. My hair actually gets more manageable and gets really shiny on the third or fourth day, so that can be worse. If I don’t shave, I just get rugged stubble. It takes a week to get to the just too much stubble to be sexy, but not enough for a beard which is a different kink all together. I can’t do a lot of other things without running afoul of the honesty issue. I can’t say the weight issue came about because of that. The weight and other things came because of an already discussed depression issue. I’m working on that though.

That’s what can happen sometimes though, people just want to look at you, but not talk or listen to you. It can become deeply frustrating, and can lead to a beautiful young person trying to uglify themselves in various ways. Just so they can try to be taken seriously, even though I’m sure this young woman’s activities are already begin dismissed as “A Phase” by people who were never quite as pretty and probably not as smart. Maybe I’m projecting, but if we’ve gone this far then why not? Who are all these posts about anyway?

I think the other reason I never went to try and uglify myself is that in all honesty I have always had to fight stupid shit. From the age of five, when I first worked out people where bullshitting me about my skills, I decided to just fight through it. If I was going to deal with stupid people saying stupid shit then so be it. Before I’d read enough, or understood enough to know what was going on, I’d picked fighting as the way to go. I’d decided on the natural as my way forward, doing things without aid would be the standard I would carry into battle. My combat is more subtle now, but I still do it the same. I’m not taking diet pills to try and slim my waist. I’m working out and trying like hell to avoid the things that made me fat. I’m not putting on make-up to hide or accentuate things, I just want people to be able to take them straight on. I say this with no complaint about people doing it another way. This is the way *I* have to do it, this is the way that I feel is most honest for *ME* in this instance.

I have always been aware enough of the privilege that these midnight black eyes, long lashes, tumbling ravenesque locks (and so on) bring to not wish to not be what I am though. Of course, I’m also aware enough of the privilege this level of intelligence brings as well. I wouldn’t want to be ugly anymore than I’d want to be stupid or lame or deaf or unable to taste sweet things. I know that the cross I’m talking about is less to bear than some people’s, but while I’m talking about myself, I’m also thinking of that poor girl.

I don’t think she has the strength to really fight. She’s putting up a good front, but I fear this battle may be beyond her. Does she have the resources to fight for her own identity? Can she maintain against the pressure? It’s different for girls, they’re given so much more pressure than boys, and the pressure I felt at her age was enormous. I haven’t seen her lately, I hope she got a job where she fits in better, where she can get away. I still think about her, like I think of so many I have seen.

You wanted to know what it was like in here. Now you have one more piece of the puzzle. When you work the whole thing out, let me know. I’m curious to see if it’s a barn or the Space Shuttle Endeavor.


Probably it'll turn out to be The Pillar of Cheese in the Shape of Jane Austen.

"Geeky Girls" Are Also "Just Plain Girls"

I’d like to talk to you for a moment about women. Now, I’m going to say some things, horrible things, stereotypical things, and worst of all, true things. I’m going to cast my net wide and give my brush board strokes and I’ll probably batten down my hatches or seize my mizenmast or some other bullshit. The metaphors WILL NOT STOP! Not everything I’m about to say is going to apply to every girl, or every boy. However, as far as rough sketches of convenient thumbnails go, I’m going to be laser precise and probably do… something like something else that’s really spot-on… with a razor or something. I’m also going to say girl instead of woman, but I’ll also say boy instead of man so you can deal with the fact that I’m infantilizing everyone.

Most people say that Geek Girls are just like geeks, only better because they're also girls. I have a different view. I say they're girls, but they're also geeks, which can be more problematic. I know this is one of those word swap things that generally annoys me, but here's the thing, I always see it as “Oh yeah, and you don’t need to buy her flowers, you can just get her the latest WoW booster deck!” in those lists about dating Geeks Girls, proving how much the writer knows about WoW and women. See, all girls like to get some flowers or the equivalent now and then. Something that shows you love and adore her, something that she can put on her desk to silently announce that she is, in fact the prettiest princess for the day. What I’m saying is that she needs to be able to show everyone else you love her too. Geek or not, you need to show and prove. You bitches ain’t never gonna get out of needing to learn some poetry if you want to score.

See, your basic geek girl is a girl first, right? Before she knew about Trek Wars or Dr. Firefly or Buffy the True Blood Slayer or whatever it is you dweebs watch (I wouldn’t know) she was a normal girl with a love of horses and pink dresses. Even today, they’ve all got a horse poster or vampire book stashed away somewhere. You’re geeky girl is a girl first, and possibly a woman, but I wouldn’t know about that. She worries about her weight, and if her hair looks nice and about how will she ever give the patriarchy what for if she worries about her weight and her hair and so on. And then, on top of that basic girlness, there is this level of geekiness. The awkwardness, the social anxiety (made worse because their bullies would be other girls who are almost exclusively mental torturers), the forgetting that not everyone knows the name of every character on the screen in any given Star Wars movie because they had all the toys and kept them catalogued until the age of 17. I never did that, I just remembered their names, fuck cataloguing. This is why I’ll never be one of you, I can pass for human so easily, I might actually be one.

One of my problems with the whole Geeks who are also Girls thing is that it ignores the fact that these girls are in fact girls. In the minds of these people, it makes them boy geeks with tits and a different approach to hygiene, rather than actual girls who have a different approach to hygiene because that’s something girls do. Too many times, the ‘man with tits’ thing rears its head and I really hate that because it neglects the feminine side of the person… which is the bit I like. I’ve always despised when someone just tries to break a person down to what amounts to a male stereotype of something and then does a sprite swap and expects us to get excited because now it’s a girl. You can’t just say “And it’s also a girl” because I’m going to sit there and go “SHE! She is also a girl… or even better yet, a person.”

Now, the important thing to remember is that none of this is theory. Most the friends I had in school were either queer, or they were geeks. Some of them turned out to be queer geeks, which surprised absolutely none of us, but that’s not important right now. For about ten years I dated two completely different kinds of geeky girls, at the same time which meant I was able to compare and contrast their attitudes. While they both showed signs of being typical women, they were also typical geeks of their particular geek caliber. Not all the stereotypes fit, but they both showed enough signs of being just plain girls that they could walk among the general population and on the other hand one of them would occasionally snort when she laughed, so… you know… snorting when they laugh. So yeah, I know the geeky girl and I can be relied upon as an expert witness in a court of law should this extraordinarily specific expertise ever actually be needed by an attorney.

My personal understanding of feminism is that, at its heart, it desires equality but not actually sameness. Sameness would be impossible anyway since our brains don’t work anything like the same. As we must remain separate, we try for equality, but without sacrificing any of the intrinsic things that make us what we are. No amount of knowing that rape culture is a real thing and understanding the mechanics of fear that goes with being a female in this world is going to make me not want to watch a pretty girl as she walks by. I can adjust my behavior, but looking is right on my DNA next to swearing with an increasingly colorful and expansive vocabulary as the day goes on. My point is that we cannot simply say that a geek girl is a geek who also is… you know a girl, but rather a girl with all the positive and negative traits of womanhood and also a geek, with all the good and bad that goes with that as well.

Also, WoW booster deck? Really? And the only other solution to that problem was flowers? I need to hold a fucking class or something. You motherfuckers need to learn the fine art of invention. Jesus Christ in cream sauce, at least mix it up with a balloon or a teddy bear or something. I’ll still think you’re a common as mud, but I’ll at least respect you for being mud with a leaf ground into it or something.

Freak Identification Chart

Syd and I were having a talk at dinner about how people tend to think she’s just a normal mundane and when she meets Con people or other such freaks she always feels like they think she’s not one of them. Her little ordinary brown mouse routine tends to belie her full and paid up membership in the Freaky People Society. As a result, freaky people tend to try her boundaries to see what will freak the mundane, only you’ve got to go quite far to freak her out. I suggested it would be a great deal easier if there were a color-coded set of badges or grade that a person could announce if the conversation came that way. Sort of like the Homeland Insecurity Department’s “Panic Now” color chart. I changed the colors around a little because I actually know how a color spectrum works.

See if you approve.



It should be more of a spectrum with colors mixing into each other, because while I’m not a pure red, I’ve been more red than orange. However, I’ve got better things to do today than make this a pure spectrum with colors melding into each other and placing a little tab to signify where I sit.

You see? If we had a system like this, a person could just say “I’m yellow, don’t worry about it.” when someone glances at them as if to ask how freaky they are. When someone starts showing off and trying to see if they can freak the person they’ve just met out, that person can just say “Look sweetie, I’m a red, I just don’t throw it in people’s faces, okay? You’re barely out of being a green, chill out.” Or just buttons with color grades on them. An orange button that reads “I’m an Orange” should do the trick. If you know the code, you’ll know what that means.

Now, I’ve put this on a kinky basis, but it could work in any medium. I’m sort of yellowy-green when it comes to Sci-Fi & Fantasy. You could adapt it to many things and then people wouldn’t be confused as to how mundane or not you are.